March 4, 2021
“Our Longhouse is a place of worship, and we haven’t been able to use it during COVID,” says Karen Whitford, a Tribal Elder who lives 12 miles east of the Dalles in Celilo Village. On Jan. 27, after a ceremonial prayer, Whitford and 103 Tribal members from throughout the Columbia River Gorge received first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at the Longhouse.
It was a vaccination event that required collaboration between two states, four counties, the Intertribal Fish Commission, social service agencies and transportation partners. Leading the effort was one of the Oregon Health Authority’s partners, One Community Health (OCH), based in Hood River and The Dalles.
“We advance health and social justice to all in our community regardless of the ability to pay,” says CEO Max Janasik. They offer medical, behavioral health and dental services, as well as education and outreach to seasonal farm workers, Tribal members and others.
Gladys Rivera, preventative health manager, led the effort to vaccinate Tribal members who would have struggled to access vaccines. Many live at Tribal fishing sites, often hours away from the nearest Indian Health Services clinic, with limited or no access to running water, electricity, cell phones or other basic needs.
OCH sent three community health workers and a nurse who lives in one of the villages to 16 sites along the Columbia River to register Tribal members. This meant knocking door-to-door, gathering people’s information, scheduling an appointment and arranging transportation. Over four days they registered 104 Tribal members.
“That is what equitable access should look like,” Rivera says. “We can’t expect people to come to us. We need to go to them. My favorite part has been establishing that rapport and trust. To be invited to their home and provide that service there hasn’t happened before.”
“We like to make the Longhouse useful,” says Whitford. She and many other Tribal members have now had second doses. She lost her nephew to COVID-19 and her husband is still suffering its aftereffects. That day, watching people arrive in their cars to be vaccinated, she says, “It was happy heartbreak, seeing who was alive and who wasn’t.” She is still being very cautious, but now, she says, “I feel safe.”
 
We heard that the process for finding a vaccination appointment has been confusing for people who live in the Salem and Portland metropolitan areas. For easier understanding, OHA has created new graphics with steps to show the best way to find a vaccine appointment.
Click on the images to see them on our website.
 
As vaccination scales up, so does our nation’s overall protection from serious outcomes due to COVID-19. Oregon has given over 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to people in Oregon, and now we have begun to receive doses of a third vaccine.
“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which recently received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the United States, began arriving in Oregon this week, and has been shown to be safe and effective in preventing severe COVID-19 illness, hospitalization and death. In clinical trials, no one who received this vaccine was hospitalized for COVID-19 and there were no COVID-19 related deaths among those vaccinated.
One of the advantages of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is that it only requires one dose. People will not have to return for a second dose to be protected. In addition, this vaccine does not need to be kept in a freezer and can be stored at refrigerated temperatures, making it easy to transport and store. It also allows for expanded availability in most community settings and mobile sites as supply scales up.
This vaccine is another important tool in our toolbox to equitably vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
There are 32 new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 2,284, the Oregon Health Authority reported at 12:01 a.m. today.
Oregon Health Authority reported 392 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of 12:01 a.m. today, bringing the state total to 156,673.
Today, OHA reported that 24,014 new doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry. Of this total, 16,376 doses were administered on March 3 and 7,638 were administered on previous days but were entered into the vaccine registry on March 3.
Cumulative daily totals can take several days to finalize because providers have 72 hours to report doses administered and technical challenges have caused many providers to lag in their reporting. OHA has been providing technical support to vaccination sites to improve the timeliness of their data entry into the state’s ALERT Immunization Information System (IIS).
Oregon has now administered a cumulative total of 1,043,609 first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines. To date, 1,341,775 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon.
These data are preliminary and subject to change. OHA's dashboards provide regularly updated vaccination data, and Oregon’s dashboard has been updated today.
The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported today are in the following counties: Baker (3), Benton (8), Clackamas (24), Clatsop (1), Columbia (3), Coos (21), Crook (4), Curry (2), Deschutes (26), Douglas (23), Grant (2), Hood River (1), Jackson (37), Jefferson (10), Josephine (23), Klamath (7), Lake (4), Lane (18), Lincoln (1), Linn (8), Malheur (1), Marion (38), Morrow (1), Multnomah (52), Polk (6), Tillamook (1), Umatilla (18), Union (8), Wallowa (1), Washington (34) and Yamhill (6).
NOTE: Details from today’s reported deaths are being reviewed and will be posted in an updated version of the daily news release, which will be posted here.
COVID-19 hospitalizations
The number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 across Oregon is 140, which is the same total from yesterday. There are 29 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) beds, which is two fewer than yesterday.
The total number of patients in hospital beds may fluctuate between report times. The numbers do not reflect admissions per day, nor the length of hospital stay. Staffing limitations are not captured in this data and may further limit bed capacity.
Tableau technical difficulties
Tableau engineers have resolved an issue that was preventing users from viewing and interacting with Tableau Public. Engineers are continuing to monitor the situation to ensure all services are operational. OHA appreciates your patience while this issue is fully resolved.
Learn more about COVID-19 vaccinations
To learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine situation in Oregon, visit our webpage (English or Spanish), which has a breakdown of distribution and other information.
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